O?

After some initial resistance, Madeleine finally cooperated and performed her pretend talking on the phone for the video camera. "O?"

No More

Here are the lyrics to Julia's brand new song, "No More," which she debuted over the phone to Yia-yia. She definitely takes after Ethan with her predilection for creepy lyrics:

No More (to the tune of London Bridge)
No more flowers, no more skies,
No more souls, no more sippy cups
All the toenails you can find,
No more eye--es

She also sang another version of this song (with different lyrics and title but the same London Bridge melody) for Ethan on camera:

More randoms

Okay, so yesterday I promised not to post about poop again today, and I will hold to that - although, I must warn you, this next item still involves the potty. When Julia went into the bathroom today, she first stepped on the scale and then announced in delight, "Mama! I weigh thirty-eight!" "Wow! You big girl!" I applauded her, then heard her climbing onto the toilet. "Mama, do you know why I rushed in here so fast?" she asked me. "Because I needed to go pee-pees SO badly." Again, I commended her: "Well, I'm glad you got into the bathroom in time. Good job!" "Yeah," she concurred, "But first, I had to see how old I am." Wow, who knew that stepping on a scale could tell you both your weight AND your age.

Afterwards, during lunch, we had this exchange:

JULIA: Mama, guess what I'm gonna do when I'm all done eating?
ME: What?
JULIA: It's gonna be SO silly!
ME: What is it?
JULIA: I'm not gonna tell you. Okay, I'll tell you. I'm gonna make the house of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf!

And after making the promised house, she proudly presented it to me, explaining, "The strawberry is the pig."



Call me crazy, but I wouldn't think an edible house would be the best option for keeping the wolf away.

Madeleine too has begun showing her ability for pretend play. Her latest trick is to take the tv remote and put it up to her ear as if it's a play phone. Today she even said, "O?" when "answering." Her ability to get the remote to the accurate spot needs a little work though. More often it winds up behind her head:

Random quotes from Julia

As we were dropping Ethan off at his church choir rehearsal this morning, he went around to the sides of the car to give hugs and kisses to the girls before heading into the church. After we started driving back to our house, Julia and I discussed the following:

JULIA: Mama, I wish I had three hands.
ME: Why do you want three hands?
JULIA: Because Daddy's coffee mug made my knee cold.

Okay. I'm at a loss. Does anybody else get it?

And on the subject of random Julia-isms, this morning after going poop on the potty she proudly exclaimed to me, "I didn't do diarrhea! I just did some lines of poop. They're having a POOP PARTY!" Hooray. I wish I could have been invited. Her excitement over her poop probably stems from the fact that she had quite an upset stomach two nights ago, and was in and out of the bathroom several times over the course of an hour. Or, as she described it, "Mama, I did brown pee. It was like a HURRICANE!"

I hope nobody decided to read this post while eating. Next blog entry shall (hopefully) have nothing to do with poop.

D-d-d-d-d-Dora

Julia's got the theme song down. Sort of.

Anoter post about artwork

Julia drew a picture the other day, and excitedly held it up to me, saying, "Mama, what does this look like to you?":



"I'm not sure," I told her. "What is it?"
Not ready to let me give up yet, she decided to give me a clue: "Do you see a red thing with a pool and a hose?"
"Uh, yeah, is this a big pool here?" (pointing to the big object on the right."
"No, no, that's a house!" she corrected me.
"Ohhhhh, okay, so the pool is this blue thing?" pointing to the blue object to the left of the house.
"Yes."
"Oh, that's a great pool, honey!"
At this point I think she was tired of waiting for me to figure out what the drawing represented, so she announced, "It's.... OUR HOUSE! With Jovina and Wyatt."

Our former neighbors, who just recently moved, had a big blow-up kiddie pool that Julia loved to swim in, so obviously the pool and hose in the drawing represents the old days when our neighbors used to be here. I encouraged her to draw the kids as well, so she flipped the paper over and colored Jovina, Wyatt and Quinn:



I think, unfortunately, Madeleine and I are lackluster play-mates compared to her dear ex-neighbor friends. Although Madeleine is finding more and more creative ways to play these days. Yesterday I let her come in the kitchen with me while I made some pumpkin bread, and she decided to pull all of the pots and pans out of one of the cupboards and then - what else - climb inside:



Who needs a play kitchen refrigerator when you can climb inside REAL kitchen cabinets? At least she didn't try to climb inside the real refrigerator.

More Madeleine babbles

Madeleine is really honing her talking skills, using her new words more and more frequently. She seems to have dropped "ball" like a bad habit, but I'm sure it will re-emerge once her newer words have become old news. She is pretty consistently labeling Ethan and I; when she sees Ethan, she'll squeal "DA-da!" in delight, whereas she prefers to use my name as a lament, particularly when I'm standing in the kitchen and she's gated into the dining room. "Ma-maaaaa! Ma-maaaaaaaa!" she'll wail from her prison, broken-hearted that although I am in her eyesight and just a few feet away from her, we're separated by wooden slabs. And though we have not had any more success getting it on video, she HAS said "baby" for a number of people now, so at least we have witnesses. Usually she'll pick up one of our many baby dolls and proclaim, "Beh-bee. Beh-bee," as she flaps it in her arm excitedly and bonks its plastic head on the hardwood floor. It's a good thing she knows that word, seeing as she is newly an aunt to sextuplets, one of whom was named after her.

Unfortunately, she has not yet given up "shit." We had the following conversation yesterday:

MADELEINE: (holding up her shoe) Shit.
ME: Shoe. That's a shoe!
MADELEINE: Shit.
ME: Yeah, it's a SHOE.
MADELEINE: Shit.
ME: Shoe.
MADELEINE: Shit.
ME: Yeah, close. Shoe!

At least she has the starting consonant blend so that it shouldn't be too hard to tweak the ending when she does finally decide to switch from "shit" to "shoe." Hopefully that day will come sooner than later.

Julia gives birth

Julia gave birth to sextuplets this morning; six baby girls by the names of Dashiell, Julia, Aria, Madia, Boo-boo, and Madeleine. Here are a few pregnancy pictures:




And here is the happy mommy cuddling with Baby Aria after she was born:



The babies are all healthy and doing well. Here they are all together after the birth:


Clockwise from bottom left:
Boo-boo, Julia, Aria, Dashiell, Madia, Madeleine

Julia seems to be sailing smoothly into motherhood, and has not been overwhelmed by having six children all at once. In fact, she is even capable of carrying all her babies at the same time:



Babies Boo-boo, Madeleine, and Aria were all dropped on their heads at one point, but I'm happy to report they are all a-okay. To extend your congratulations to the new mommy, feel free to post them in the comments section.

Sunday morning breakfast video

Tea party

Julia decided to have a tea party yesterday with a bunch of the play food from her play kitchen, and I was lucky enough to be invited. I had just finished a run and my post-run stretches, so I told Julia that after I hopped in the shower I would join her. While I was showering, she set the dining room table for our party, and couldn't wait for me to come see all the goodies. Or, as she put it, "Mama, wait til you come and see all the WHOLE WHEAT junky food on the table for you!"




Whew! I was so relieved to know that while I was eating my plastic play food I could still follow my pre-diabetes whole-grain diet. "And, Mama, I used PRETEND sugar!" she told me, making it all the more edible for me. As I sat down at the table to indulge, Julia offered me something invisible from one of her little play bowls. "Mama, this has milk in it, but the milk part is all eaten up, so you can have some," she told me, then held out a pitcher towards my tea cup. "This is rice milk, Mama. Would you like some?" I thanked Julia profusely for taking such care to prepare all the pretend food so that it was milk, sugar, and refined-flour free for her lactose-intolerant, pre-diabetic mother. And what a feast we had. The whole-wheat plastic donuts were especially delicious.

Little artists

Julia has loved her first week back to preschool, and likes both her new classmates and new teachers. She brought home some artwork she'd made in class, and it seems she is using art as a means to express her current fears:


"This is a spider. And do you know what kind of spider? A BLUE TARANTULA! I didn't know how to draw the back legs so I just drew the front legs."


"This is a big hurricane and that's a little bird trying to fly away from the storm!"

I must say, though, she is getting braver and bolder every night; last night she even dared to fall asleep with her head out of the blanket:


In your FACE, Blue Tarantula!

Madeleine also tried her hand at artwork today. I gave her a piece of paper and, after demonstrating how to color with a crayon, I let her have a turn. She seemed to understand the concept, but had trouble holding the crayon at the proper angle to actually make a mark on the paper:



So before long she gave up on that and resorted to whacking the crayon against the paper like it was a drumstick. I thought maybe a marker would be easier to color with, since she wouldn't need to apply as much pressure to the paper as necessary with a crayon. I tried handing her a blue marker, but she didn't attempt to color with it. She did, however, hold it out to show me while saying "Sssheeit":



And then she decided to hold it by the tip, thereby coloring her hands blue, so the marker went away and we switched back to the crayon. After another futile attempt to draw on the paper, she decided maybe it would work better in her mouth:



After I discouraged her from sucking on the crayon, she decided to ditch it all together and instead opted to play a game of peek-a-boo with the piece of paper:




So, yeah, not exactly a budding artist yet, but not bad for a first attempt...

Julia, Julia, and more Julia

Hmm. Where to even begin...

First of all, Julia has now decided she wants a hand in coming up with blog posts, because yesterday as she was playing in the living room, she suddenly took a very intentional, very comedic fall (complete with "Woooooaahhh!") and then proceded to tell me, "Mama, THAT should go on your blog!" So here it is, on my blog. Little does Julia know that she doesn't need to deliberately come up with funny material for my posts; she already naturally provides me with PLENTY of material.

Speaking of material, here is more. Julia and I had this conversation yesterday:

JULIA: Mama, do you know what the word humongous means?
ME: I DO know what humongous means. Do you know?
JULIA: Um... dragons are humongous. A ferris wheel is humongous. Dinosaurs are humongous.
ME: So, does humongous mean really, really small?
JULIA: NOOO, really really big!
ME: Oh, that's right!
JULIA: And Mama, what else is humongous?
ME: Um... elephants are humongous.
JULIA: And whales!
ME: Yup!
JULIA: The OCEAN is humongous!
ME: And space is humongous. The sun is humongous
JULIA: CITIES are humongous!
ME: Yes, some cities are humongous.
JULIA: And buildings!
ME: Yes, some of the buildings we see in Boston are humongous.
JULIA: HOUSES are humongous!
ME: Some houses are kind of small, and some are humongous, you're right.
JULIA: And do you know what else is humongous?
ME: What?
Julia: (pause.... wracking her brain...) DADDY!

At least there's one person in the world who doesn't think Ethan is a midget.

And finally, Project Daddy and Maggie got into a major show-down today. Here's a snippet of what I overheard as Julia played with her Little People under the dining room table:

"She'll NEVER BE ALIVE!' yelled Project Daddy."
'I thought you'd never be alive!'
'I drank a water!'
'I stole some water from yoooooooou!"

Here are a few pictures of Project Daddy and Maggie going head-to-head over the water issue (and the fact that despite Project Daddy's best plans, Maggie had somehow managed to continue being alive):




Yeah, that's right Maggie, get in his face.

The booty, once again

I guess all her practice doing the booty call dance has made Julia's bum indestructible, because last night when I checked on her in her bed, all but her little patootie was covered by her invincible shield of a blanket:



Take that, Blue Tarantula!

Units of time

While Julia has figured out how to avoid the blue tarantula at night by hiding under her blanket, she still hasn't gathered the courage to venture up into her room during the day. Last week when her friend Nate came over to play, he suggested they go up to her room and play with her matchbox cars, but she couldn't be persuaded. "I can't go up in my room because there's a blue tarantula in there, Nate." Over the weekend she asked me to come in with her so she could play in her room, so I did, but whenever I tried to leave, even for a second, she insisted on coming with me. So in an attempt to start getting her over this fear, I talked to her about an idea I had. Starting today, she'd go up into her room alone for one minute. Tomorrow we'll do it for two minutes. The following day for three, etc., until we could build up to large chunks of time during which she was in her room alone, without any blue tarantula bothering her. Who knows if this will actually work, but I didn't have any other bright ideas. She seemed okay with this plan, so today we tried for one minute. Julia happily trounced up the stairs, opened her door, walked in her room, and immediately walked out. "Okay, I did one minute!" she proclaimed triumphantly. I sent her back in, explaining that it had really only been one second, and I would call up to her when one minute had passed. So she stood in her doorway, one hand on the door frame, calling down every five seconds, "Is it one minute yet?" Now, obviously, like any child of this age, she has no real concrete concept of units of time. In fact, today she asked me if we could go back to Texas sometime, and this time stay for "eleven months. Or eleven years." So clearly the measurement of time is somewhat arbitrary in her mind. After the time had passed, and she asked why I did such a long one minute, I thought it might be a good time to try and explain the concept of a minute. I sat her on my lap and showed her the second hand on my watch, pointing out how it was on the diamond (which is at the top center in place of a "12".) I then told her we would watch the second hand (or the "moving line," as I called it) go around the circle, and when it passed over the diamond again, it would be one minute. I asked her a few times if it had been one minute yet, before the second hand was even close to the diamond, and she responded in the negative. Then as the second hand reached the diamond, I waited for her to say something, but got silence. "So has it been one minute?" I asked. Julia, clearly distracted by something else in the room and not paying my watch any attention, and probably feeling like a prisoner stuck on my lap for a tedious lesson, replied, "Um... not yet!" Okay, so my lesson failed, but I told her it in fact had been a minute because the second hand had passed by the diamond. So tomorrow I will let the second hand go by the diamond two times before I call her down from her room. We'll see how that goes.

In another feat of deductive reasoning, Julia called to me through the closed bathroom door, as she was doing poop on the potty, "Hey Mama, does "sun" begin with the letter G?" "No, it begins with the letter S," I told her, and after a moment of silent thought she said, "Well, Madeleine's shirt thinks it begins with G." I thought of the fact that today Madeleine is wearing a shirt that says "Puerto Rico," trying to figure out which letter could possibly resemble a "G" to her. "You can show me what you mean when you're done on the potty," I said, and when she came out, we both took a look at Madeleine's shirt together. Suddenly it dawned on me that the sun itself was what she imagined to be the letter G, and I have to say I can understand why:



I wonder why on earth this was what she was thinking about while cloistered in the bathroom on the pot, but one thing Julia has proven is that you never quite know what's going on in that head of hers...

Where does she come up with this stuff?

Julia gleefully wanted me to see her "crack house" today. It was basically just a spot (or "crack") of the living room floor surrounded by toy bins and other large playthings:


Julia in her crack house

According to Julia, a crack house is a house that's made of a little crack. You just sleep in a bed and play all day. Construction workers make a crack house; pretend ones. Everybody shares in the crack house and they have share time.

Well, at least they aren't doing a booty call dance in the crack house.


Julia in her crack house bed

Unsuccessful camera attempts

Yesterday the kids and I got together with a friend of mine and her 7-week old baby. When I pointed out the baby to Madeleine, she looked right at him and said, "Baby. Baby. Baby." Then last night when I gave her a baby doll and labeled it, she again said, "Baby. Baby." So today I decided I would try and get it on video, along with her ever-increasing ability to stand on her own, but she had other intentions. As soon as the camera was on, not only would she collapse to the floor from her standing position and crawl off after something, but she suddenly seemed to have no idea what a baby was. "See the baby?" I'd say, handing her the doll. She would stare down at it in silence, then throw it and crawl off in another direction. "Baby!" I'd say, handing it back to her. "A da da da da," she'd reply, quickly discarding the baby for some other toy. When I finally got her interest in the baby doll, she proved her parenting skills by first chomping on its foot, then shaking it up and down so that its head repeatedly bonked the floor, then tossed it aside. "Baby!" I would persist on saying, handing her the doll with one hand, video rolling in the other. "Ssssshit," she'd say, holding the baby doll out and showing it to me. I eventually gave up, so of course later in the day she crawled right over to the baby doll and declared, "Baby. Baby. Baby."

Speaking of unsuccessful camera attempts, I have been trying, for the last week or so, to get a good photo of Julia and Madeleine together to update the one that's hanging in our hall. I've managed to get a few so-so pictures, but none great enough to blow up as 5X7 and hang on the wall. Today while we were playing outside in the backyard, Madeleine was having such a blast in our new bouncy house that I thought I might have some success snapping a picture of the girls in there together. My attempt to get a picture of both girls smiling at the camera was about as fruitful as my earlier attempts to capture Madeleine standing and talking on video. Here are a few of the shots I got:

Julia's future plans

As I was doing my daily stretching routine, Julia sat down and joined me. I told her how impressed I was to see her executing the stretches, to which she responded excitedly, "When I grow up and I'M a runner, I'm gonna do these stretches EVERY DAY!" That comment prompted the following conversation:

ME: Oh, I hope you'll be a runner when you get older! Then we can run together!
JULIA: (throwing her arms around me) I promise, Mommy! And will you come visit me? Please, please?
ME: Of course I will! When you're a grown-up, I'll come visit you any time you want! Will you come visit me?
JULIA: I will! Um, Mama, um, I think I'm going to live... I think I'll get a house right next to Blue.
ME: Oh, I see, so you'll still live in Needham when you're a grown-up?
JULIA: Yeah, because I decided, I still want to go eat at Blue when I'm a grown-up, so I decided I'll just still live in Needham, but I'll just live in a different HOUSE.
ME: That sounds good. Who are you going to live with?
JULIA: Um... I think... another mommy... um, I think I'll live with someone who KNOWS me.
ME: Will you have children?
JULIA: If I have a baby in my tummy!
ME: Do you think the baby in your tummy will be a boy or a girl?
JULIA: Um, I think I'll have... TWO GIRLS!
ME: Oh, just like me! What will you name them?
JULIA: I'll name one Maria... actually, I think I'll name one Julia, and one Madeleine.
ME: Oh, so you'll be just like me. Who will you be married to?
JULIA: Um, I think... a husband.
ME: What will his name be?
JULIA: I don't know.
ME: Do you think you'll marry Wyatt?
JULIA: (huge smile on her face) Um, no, not really, because Wyatt is just, like, a kid.
ME: Yeah, but when you're grown up, Wyatt will be grown up too.
JULIA: Oh, yeah! Then, I think I'll marry Wyatt EVERY DAY!

Madeleine stands

Madeleine's new favorite game has been to stand up at my big exercise ball, whack her hands upon it wildly, then throw both arms up in the air for as long as she can stand on her own, and finally fall down on to her bum with giggles. This kid has been completely uninterested in trying to stand on her own if I attempt to let go of her hands. She starts buckling her knees to sit down as soon as I take just one hand away. So I'm glad to see she's experimenting on her own with standing. Sometimes she'll really surprise herself and stand for quite a long time - today she even managed to clap her hands for herself while standing on her own. The best part is that while she stands, she starts to giggle with anticipation of the big ka-boom that's about to come, and the longer it takes to lose her balance, the funnier it seems to be. Today I tried letting go of her hands to see if she would take to standing on her own, and she did - I even managed to get a couple of pictures. (Though the funny part is that she still needs to throw her arms up in the air for some reason, just like she does when letting go of the exercise ball):





I also got a little bit of her ball-play on video, completely with wild, hand-smacking delight:

Drama in Bethlehem

So Julia was just overheard playing with her manger people, who live in the freezer of her play kitchen. Here's a taste of what was going on:

MARY: Listen! I'll stay with Jesus.
THE QUEEN (who is really a Wise Man): Everybody, come in the castle! Drrrrr. Now your turn. Drrrrr.
ME: Julia, what's happening to the manger people when you make that sound?
JULIA: Oh, Drrr is coming up to the elevator, because there's mean guys and they keep killing everybody, but they're trying to rescue the ones who aren't killed. So they're in the elevator cup!
(And by "elevator cup" she means the blue cup to her play dishes, being used in this scenario as an elevator.)
THE QUEEN: Drrrr. There she is! (Spotting the Angel.) She's dead again! We have to rescue her before only her bones are left. We're coming!
ANGEL: Wait! Oh my gosh! It just got to bedtime!
MANGER FOLK: All right.
ANGEL: Well, bye guys.
MANGER FOLK: Bye.

After they bid adieu, the manger people laid back down in the freezer to go to sleep:





And the Wise Men went to sleep in the sink:



For those of you worrying about the fate of the poor Angel (although she did manage to talk even though she was dead, so how bad off can she be?), here is a happy update on how she's doing:

"They kissed her and she woke up. They had to kiss her like in Sleeping Beauty. The shepherds and the wise man, they all had to kiss her, but she couldn't kiss herself, because she was asleep! Yeah, they need a tetanus shot when they die, but only a kiss wakes them up."

I Had a Cat

Julia's September issue of "Ladybug" magazine has an old Appalachian folk song in it called "I Had a Cat," and the tune has been stuck in both our heads all day. In the magazine, the song mentions a bunch of farm and domestic animals - cat, dog, duck, sheep, cow, pig, donkey. However, Julia decided to get creative and add some animals that you might not expect to feed "under yonder tree," as the song goes. Here's a video of her interpretative version of the song:

Dora Mermaid Party

Julia has been talking for days about how next time it's a weekend, she wants Daddy to watch Dora: Mermaid with her (one of the Dora episodes we have On Demand.) I told her that they could definitely do that this weekend. Somehow her idea of a Daddy/Julia viewing of Dora: Mermaid turned more extravagant, though, and all of a sudden she was fantasizing about all the people who could come and watch with her. "Mama, I want to invite all my camp friends and all my school friends over to watch Dora: Mermaid." I gave her the sort of vague, placating responses parents tend to give to these fantasies: "Oh, you do, huh? Well, that's nice of you to invite everyone over." She then extended her list of invitees even further: "AND I want my camp counselors and my swim teachers to come too." When she talked to Yia-yia on the phone later in the day, she invited Yia-yia along as well, telling her to send some of the kids we know in CT our way too. I smiled to myself, thinking how cute it was that she loved imagining a big party of kids all watching this Dora episode together.

Well, turns out it wasn't just a fantastical imagining. I should have known better. On Saturday, Julia asked me if I could send an email to all her camp friends and all her school friends and invite them over. I told her I don't know the emails of all these people, and she declared brightly, "I know their email! I know how to do it! Mama, can I sit at your computer and send them my email?" Again, still thinking she was just playing, I let her sit at my computer, opened a new email to no one, and let her type "julia" as a message, then commended her on her great job sending an email. I then put the thought of Dora: Mermaid away until later that morning, during Madeleine's nap, which is the time of day Julia typically watches a show. "Julia, do you want to watch Dora: Mermaid with Daddy now that Madeleine's at nap?" I asked her. She reflected on this for a second, then said, "Mmm, no, I want to wait until all my friends get here to watch it."

Yikes. So it suddenly hit me - she really, actually thought she was having her friends over to watch this thing. She really believed that all there is to sending an email is to type your name and it will magically go to all the people you are thinking of in your head, and furthermore, that they will be able to translate "julia" to mean "I want you to come over today at X-time and watch Dora: Mermaid with me." I felt horrible that I'd let this thought get so far along in the process that she really thought she was having a big Dora-watching party. Ethan and I tried to gently explain to her that a) Labor Day weekend is a VERY busy weekend for traveling, and chances were a lot of her friends weren't even in Needham this weekend, and b) It takes more than day-of notice to organize a gathering, so it wasn't something we could just send an email about in the morning and expect a turn-out that same day. Thankfully, while she seemed a little disappointed, she wasn't TOO broken-hearted, because she still got to watch it with Daddy, which was a special treat. And to give props to Ethan, he shouted out all of the answers and Spanish words Dora patiently waits for the viewers to say, and perhaps the best part of all was the impromptu family dance party we had at the end along to the "We did it!" song. Actually, one family member did not participate in the dance party. Madeleine sat there staring at us with rapt attention while we danced. Not with a smile on her face. With a look of wonderment, as if she was trying to figure out what on EARTH we were all doing. Give it a few years, though, and I bet you she'll be joining in too...

Julia sings in Spanish

Julia sings a song in "Spanish" about a witch and various other things:

Julia peruses old photos

Julia recently asked to look at an old photo album from my junior year of college, and she had some really astute things to say about the following pictures:


ME: Julia, do you know who this is in the picture?
JULIA: Auntie Caitlyn, and Mike!



JULIA: Mom, and whose baptism is this?


(Pound signs in place - the best my photo editing software could offer - to protect the innocent; or in this case, high school friends of my sister who may not appreciate "blast from the past" pictures appearing on my blog.) I did explain to Julia that this was Auntie Shannon's graduation party, to which she demanded, "Then who were the cakes for?" I then had to explain that just because Madeleine had a sheet cake at her baptism party, it does not mean that any party involving a sheet cake is automatically a baptism.

Loser Barbie

When I was a little girl, my absolute favorite Barbie doll was my Icelandic Barbie. She had white-blonde wavy hair and a gold-laced blue peasant dress and I thought she was positively beautiful. In fact, I had a fascination with Iceland and wanted to travel there someday so I could experience the blonde-haired beauties in person. Well, I recently found out that my mother has been saving my Icelandic Barbie all these years, to pass along to Julia when she became old enough for Barbie dolls. That rite of passage came recently, and Julia has been thrilled with her "new" toy. Unfortunately, whether it's because the doll is already well-worn, or because Julia actually *isn't* old enough yet, within about five minutes of Julia playing with her, Icelandic Barbie became a loser:



We tried sticking her head back on, which allows for two options. She can be Barbie-no-neck, which looks pretty ridiculous, or she can be, à la Harry Potter, Nearly-Headless-Barbie. Luckily, Julia doesn't get too upset when Nearly-Headless-Barbie's head rolls off over and over. Today when it happened, she just cast the Barbie body aside and moved onto a new activity: coloring a picture that was "a drawing completely of so much spider webs!":